Whistler cabbie's tales make a compelling read

All Good stuff Pat Meehan has taken his experiences as a Whistler cab driver and published his first novel.

Pat Meehan is a writer.

He's also a Whistler cab driver.

It's a match made in storytelling heaven.

His first self-published novel, It's All Good, is the result of five years of getting the bold, the bad, and the beautiful home safely from a late night at Buffalo Bills, or Tommy Africa's, or Garf's.

He calls the experience the craziest time of his life, something he discovered after leaving a job as a long-distance truck driver.

"The desire to write grew over time out of being a cab driver," Meehan says.

"I realized that I was being exposed to a lot of unique circumstances and people at the job. I carried a pad of paper and if something unusual happened during a fare, I started writing it down.

"I have at least enough material for two more books."

In the book, there are encounters with royalty and weepy biker dudes, with the darker side of the resort represented in the form of drugs and escorts.

There are also poignant moments, such as when he offers advice to a young man whose girlfriend told him of an unplanned pregnancy.

It's storytelling based on real-life experience.

"My intention is not to cause anyone grief with this, which is why it is a work of fiction," Meehan says.

The book's style is conversational, heavy on the dialogue, and Meehan believes it would translate well into film.

He credits author Joseph Boyden, who was a cab fare in 2014, for the advice he needed to move forward with his dream.

"He told me to put two shit pages down a day and then go back and edit it," Meehan says.

"He is a real nice, charismatic man. In the five minutes I was with him I really got that sense of him."

Meehan says he works hard as a cabbie for a season or two and then takes off for a stint of travelling. It was while he was sitting on a beach in Taiwan a year ago that he committed to heeding Boyden's advice to write while he was away from home.

"Unlike living in Whistler, where a lot of your time is devoted to earning your living, I had nothing but time in Taiwan and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to start it," Meehan says.

"I decided I needed to get one of these many thought lines in my head finished and out there. To have finished a book feels like a huge accomplishment."

Meehan has lived in Whistler for nine years and has been writing on and off for "many years."